33>The Unnatural History of the Sea

I am resting from a book that I can only bear to read in small doses. It is safely packed away in a box, in a bag, in the bow of a boat we are heading north in on Sunday.



Skye and beyond. On an eighty foot, gaff-rig Fleetwood trawler, the Keeywaydin. I wonder what tonnage of fish has flapped onto her decks since she was built in 1909.

We will take the kayaks, two nets & two pots. I might even learn to rod-fish.

I will open it again on those empty waters of the North Irish Sea, and read more of the wholesale squandering of the sea’s creatures we have indulged in.

It is “The Unnatural History of the Sea” by Callum Roberts.
Read it.

I don’t want it to add to that great weight of ecological remorse, anger and guilt we encourage each other to indulge in though.
I regard that mindset as a disempowering and destructive hysteria. A neurosis. One of the many that when added together make up our culture.



I work on the assumption that the Earth is a loving and forgiving home, and that the only way we can restore her richness and dignity is by restoring our belief in our own place in the magnificence of her fertility.

Destructive behaviour that we ascribe to Greed I suspect stems more often from insecurity.
Collectively that fosters an attitude of “If I don’t do it, somebody else will”.

The Earth is Amazingly Bountiful. Callum notices that we have a strange ability to quickly forget what we have lost. I remember regarding old fishermen's description of lobsters with claws as thick as your arm as tall tales.

There is uncanny resemblance between the myth of the Fall and the scenario of Climate Change. Both ideas dispirit and disempower and facilitate central control of behaviour.


Beware.




I have sneaked glimpses further on and suspect Callum expresses similar faith in the sea, in more scientific terms.

Otherwise I wouldn’t read on.



Otherwise I wouldn’t fish.

32>Skylarks' Tongues

This is a new kind of Fishing for me.
When I was a thin-lipped Provider, each day had to pay.




Lobsters were five pound notes, crabs small change, fish was mainly bait apart from those few courtcard species.
Now I am catching to eat, not to sell.

So I boiled and dissected those spiders, cooked wrasse, and have vowed, finally, to try and skin a dogfish.

Today I ate fiddler crabs.
They were delicious.



Fiddlers, Lightnings, Velvet or Swimming crabs: for years I danced them out of the pots, trying to avoid their nips, as fast as possible, straight back into the sea. That was, unless I was desperate for bait.
(-Some lobsters I am sure resist the lure of those fast-food restaurants that drop in around them, by avoiding 'exotic baits ' and eating only 'wild' foods . The biggest lobsters that I ever caught were in pots baited with bits of crab.)

I wouldn't describe a pan of fiddlers as a meal, but then who knows what chastened times might lie ahead: they would brighten up a diet of potatoes or poor bread.
They would be great beach food.

This isn't just siege cuisine, but a means to adjust some of the species imbalances our selective, industrial fishing has fostered.
I've thought perhaps too often that the plague of spidercrabs and dogfish show our brutalizing of the Sea's ecology, just as the increase in gulls and rats reflects our wastefulness.
So in human society, where the rats and sharks and gulls prosper, and quieter, more subtle souls suffer.

I don't include myself in that unlucky category, as I ponder which board to nail my dogfish to, prior to skinning.




But if you fish with anything more than a bent hook, you will catch more than you can, or want to, eat.

Netting is Spiders Stop Play.

I had hoped Llys Meddyg, a fine local restaurant, would buy some, but it is still too quiet, and anyway they really only will want the claws.
There IS meat in the main body, admittedly not a lot, but how do I handle this?
Would I kill skylarks and bison for their tongues? What do I do with the bodies?

But I can't set a net until I have an outlet for those spiders.

A SURFACE NET! I wondered about buying some floatline to lash onto my existing nets, but the man at Advanced Netting humoured me for a while but said plastic milk bottles would be just as good.
I like suppliers who stop me wasting money or effort.



It is all too easy to get carried away in pursuit of your prey.
Two drawbacks are that the net will be very visible, and that there are a lot of fish jumping out there which I suspect are sewin...

Another strategy I'm going to try is a keep box.
The one I've made won't hold many spiders, but will save me boiling solitary lobsters and crabs.
The hardest thing now will be where to pitch it, for security from rough weather and from other humans.




Problems, Problems, once you try to evenly spread the fickle gifts of the Sea.
Bent hook fishing has its shiny side.

31> A Long Sea Day

You get days when some logic keeps you at sea, hours past any original plan.
Your bones ache, your skin burns, you dream of tea and chocolate and ice-cold beer.



My son is visiting, with all that extraneous vitality that cries out for Tasks. Adventures.
Protein.
So we set a couple of nets despite presentiments of doggies and spiders . My hands were nearly healed from last time.

The weather is Instant Summer.




Jetskis spume in mad paroxysms and ghostly angling craft drift across the bay's mouth on mysterious missions.
The sea and the sky are faintly rippled various blues.
I gave up my wetsuit for a pair of ragged sawn off jeans and a sunhat.





The first net had a polite delegation of spiders & doggies and three nice pollack.



We were out on the peak of a big tide and the other net buoy was lost.
Perhaps the tide, a passing boat, a massive catch. We decided we should go back at low tide.
It was a another place, with towering rocks where we had paddled that morning.
The net was there, part draped over a rock with a fat pollack twisted up in the buoy end.




There was a wrasse, a pollack and two fine mullet in its length.
The mullet were flapping fresh in.
I suspect they come in on the low tide to feed on the deeper pastures of seaweed.
We went into a bay and untwisted and bagged the net.
The other net likewise held two fresh mullet, spidercrabs, and wrasse.
Unless I am fish-starved I let the wrasse go, as janitors of these particular coves.



The pots have been hopeless, though set so close in the buoys knock the rocks.

When we came in, four hours had passed, and I dreamed of a sea of Earl Grey Tea.


There are people who pursue a purpose so deeply on the sea that part of them never really comes back.
Their skin burns black with the sun; their eyes crease into thin lines against the glare. They carry the loneliness of Being with dignity.

There is an increasing tribe of beach-bums, who just about hold down jobs in cities, but live to surf and sailboard.
Young disciples of the Elemental. Their lives are measured in sea days.
They are as stricken as any oceanic Ahab.



The fisherman's day ends slowly, as you have to find useful homes for your catch. Long days seem to take pleasure in getting even longer.

I admit I gave the spiders away.

30>Sore Hands

I set two nets last night but went to them with a slight dread today.
Spiders
They are around. Maybe this is when they come through here on their March North.



I have had them both inside and clinging like burglars onto pots as I lifted them; they seem pretty stupid.
I had one in the first net I set yesterday after an hour.

The cat was dramatically sick on the first one I cooked, but I picked some good meat out of those bait burglars and felt nourished rather than ill.
It was richer than the other crab, and needed a strong, salty boiling.

I gave claws to the neighbours as a taster. -Getting them to accept a live crustacean with its trail of doubts and cruelties in its preparation straight off, costs so much time in reassurances & explanations that I might as well eat it for them.



So I wasn't hesitant about eating them, just as a possible horde and what they would be like to unpick from my nets.


I met one ten foot into my first net this morning.
An ungainly, dangling thing that I pulled onboard and shook around for ages trying to find how it was caught up.


Ten crabs later, my technique was developing. If I kept the net stretched open, I had more chance of freeing them: the back is mass of spines only too glad to grab yet more net that comes its way.
I had to sacrifice some meshes today.

They are not aggressive though, so there is little to fear from the claws; unlike the other crabs who clench up like springs, but nip out fiercely. The smaller, the quicker and fiercer.

Indispersed with the crabs, who seemed to be in clusters, were bunches of dogfish.
I almost welcomed them after the danglers. Sandpaper rather than hedgehogs

It was like a parade of monsters and meanies. A Devil's Washing-line.
The dogfish writhed and the spiders scuttled in my fish-well.
After a couple of crabs and a particularly lively doggie had hopped overboard, I took to putting the spiders in a sack.




Near the end of the second net was a gleaming silvery thing like a hero from another film.
How odd.

A Bass. A perfect thing.


I got my nets in and bagged and was unloading before I saw it was gone. Somehow it had slipped overboard as I had disentangled that last Spider.

I am feeling the loss of that fish deeply.
More deeply than I can fathom.

I tap these keys with crab-sore hands and hope that film with Bass and Mullet in starring roles will come to a Bay near me soon, and the Spider Monster Epic leaves town.